Stella Sommer has announced a double album with the two singles “Winter Queen (In Summer)” and “Silence Wore A Silver Coat” for November 25th. The second piece mentioned is the namesake of her third solo record, which bundles a total of 24 songs. Both titles released on Wednesday (August 31) are of oppressive beauty: Sommer’s dark, sometimes whispering voice leads into a kind of magic land through which winter queens stride and silver cloaks wave.
Decade heavy folk
In musical terms, both three-minute tracks are reminiscent of folk music from the 70s: Karen Dalton and Judee Sill, crushed by world-weariness, can serve as a reference, as can the enigmatic, unfathomable and much too late discovered Sibylle Baier. Sommer herself once described her sound in an interview as “timeless, elegant and self-contained” – spot on, as the author of this text says.
Streaming, no thanks
Incidentally, only the singles will be available on the well-known streaming services – if you want to hear the long player in its entirety, you have to get the music elsewhere. “A friendly defiant salute to the willingness of the music industry to throw in the towel, a clear gesture against the shareable tiling of art for the dreary year-end charts distinction purposes,” says the press release written by Spiegel journalist Anja Rützel.
Stella Sommer rose to fame as the singer of the indie rock group Die Heiterkeit. As such, she has released four albums in changing line-ups – most recently in 2019 WAS PASSIERT IST. For her solo records she writes in English; the last one came out two years ago and is titled NORTHERN DANCER. ME reviewer André Boße gave it five and a half stars out of a possible six. He found: “Wherever summer is – you want to go there.”